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When work is punished: The tragedy of America’s welfare state

Exactly two years ago, some of the more politically biased progressive media outlets (who are quite adept at creating and taking down their own strawmen arguments, if not quite as adept at using an abacus, let alone a calculator) took offense at our article “In Entitlement America, The Head Of A Household Of Four Making Minimum Wage Has More Disposable Income Than A Family Making $60,000 A Year.” In it we merely explained what has become the painful reality in America: for increasingly more it is now more lucrative – in the form of actual disposable income – to sit, do nothing, and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work. This is graphically, and very painfully confirmed, in the below chart from Gary Alexander, Secretary of Public Welfare, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (a state best known for its broke capital Harrisburg). As quantitied, and explained by Alexander, “the single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045.”

The constitution has been on it’s death bed since bho was first elected! And now that bho was re-elected not even life support will help it if he isn’t stopped! bho is doing everything he/team can think of to get a vast number of American’s under big bro. power/need.

My beloved Republic is going down hill so fast, I don’t think it will survive?
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People look at me like I’m a crazy person when I explain why I hated the previous deep blue city I lived in. The entire system of governance is deeply immoral, billions of dollars in new bond issuances for stupidity because it’s basically free now.

Paying off the mortgage next week, taking savings to do so. If energy prices skyrocket, as Obama wishes, and ethanol replaces food, everything will be much more costly. Having no mortgage will be a big help, especially if our IRA’s are confiscated or taxed into oblivion. Will buy some gold with the money that used to go toward the mortgage. Also ammo and a few more lessons at the range.

As the analogy goes, why be one of those pulling the wagon when sitting in the wagon getting pulled is so much easier. And more fun now too since you get to sit in wagon and call those pulling it names.

Best estimate of the shadow economy is that it is at 25% of GDP and growing. Bartering and silver are becoming not only acceptable in a commercial sense but are also becoming a form of vetting (if you offer payment in silver, you’re one of the good guys).

The GDP of the US will shrink as more and more take their labor outside the reach of the feds. The Fed Reserve can print all the Bernanke bucks it wants but they will not affect the silver people. I wouldn’t be surprised to eventually see dual pricing – choice of using dollars or silver coins.

Honest work is for suckers. Even when you can find a job, it’s part-time junk that won’t even pay enough to let you live independently. I shoulda been fascinated with being a burglar instead of a computer programmer when I was little.

Hey, maybe I can take up squatting as a lifestyle. There’s gonna be a whole lot of houses and nobody can afford them anyway.

Honest work is for suckers. Even when you can find a job, it’s part-time junk that won’t even pay enough to let you live independently. I shoulda been fascinated with being a burglar instead of a computer programmer when I was little.

Hey, maybe I can take up squatting as a lifestyle. There’s gonna be a whole lot of houses and nobody can afford them anyway.